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Puck (Will Hickman) in A Midsummer Night's Dream. |
Puck yes
By Ed Rampell
What is even the point of writing a review about such inspired madcap mystical mirthfulness? Honestly Dear Reader, you should save your reviewer the effort and simply just go see the concoction and confection that is the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Geers’ effervescent version of the Bard’s dream-like yarn is such rip-roaring good fun that it should suffice to say, that if you love yourself and believe you deserve to have a good time, get thee to a Topanga amphitheater.
Yet review it I shall -- once more into the literary breaches, lads and lasses! Where shall I begin in describing this surreal romantic romp written with quill and ink way back when Amazons were female warriors and not online book retailers, and pixies not pixels reigned? William Shakespeare’s frothy supernatural tale with its plot about lovers blithely switching partners the way most people change their socks inspired Woody Allen’s 1982 A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy.
Costumer Katherine Crawford’s regalia -- especially of the motley crew of faeries -- is the best pixie-ish apparel this side of Tinkerbell. As usual, the troupe’s organized mayhem of mise-en-scene, co-directed by Willow Geer and her auntie, Mellora Marshall, takes full advantage of the surrounding woods and hills, literally putting the Botanicum into the Theatricum. But in this production the WGTB outdoes itself, offering something I haven’t seen before on this stage amidst the sylvan glade: Puck (played by the athletic Will Hickman) swings above the boards, Tarzan-like, on a tree-attached rope -- not a vine, although the theatrical effect remains divine.
Although methinks A Midsummer Night’s Dream is age appropriate for children of all ages, the opening is quite sensuous with sinewy, sexy Sydney Mason as Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, adorned by war paint in a revealing outfit, embracing Theseus, duke of Athens (the lucky J.B. Waterman; Valeka Holt generally plays Hippolyta). Leaping leopards -- a sort of leopard skin-garbed, war whooping Tanya Edwards is a standout in the ensemble of Amazons.
The shape shifting Mellora Marshall, who sheds genders the way we mere mortals change garments, surpasses herself here, playing a character who isn’t even human. The grand Marshall is neither a man nor a woman -- portraying Titania, she is Oberon’s fairy queen. As Helena, Marshall’s co-helmer, Willow Geer, is confronted by a creative challenge: Somehow this young woman who is, offstage, a radiant redheaded beauty, must somehow convince audiences she is a plain Jane. That through her dramatic sleight-of-hand Willow manages to do so is proof that she’s one of L.A. finest stage actresses.
And now we come to the bottom of Will’s bill, with Katherine Griffith’s hilarious cross-gender turn as the male, mustachioed, bellowing Bottom. Shakespeare, of course, slyly comments on the art of acting and those who do it in Hamlet, wherein “the play’s the thing.” The Bard also does so in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bottom is part of an itinerant troupe of actors (or something or other) who perform a play-within-the-play about the Roman mythological characters Pyramus and Thisbe (Ovid tells their tale in his Metamorphoses) to celebrate the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta and company. Griffith’s Bottom is a bottomless pit of ego magically transformed by some stage effects into Shakespeare’s notion of what the playwright thought of hammy actors.
To be sure, the Botanicum Theatricum, as usual, does the Bard proud. Nevertheless, the most magical thing about A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s vision and his deathless dialogue. Go Puck yourselves and allow the enchanting, irreverent revels of this tidbit of Topanga tomfoolery cast a spell on you.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is runs through Sept. 28 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For more information: 310-455-3723; www.Theatricum.com.
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